When researchers say “observe” they actually mean “measure”. And when you’re working with sub-atomic particles, “measure” isn’t some passive activity. It’s an active thing. When you measure small particles you are applying some force upon them, changing them in some way from how they would otherwise act.
Imagine if you were tasked with measuring traffic on the other side of the planet, but you had no cameras. The only tool you had was a gigantic 30 ton, satellite-networked pendulum swinging across the highway. The only way you know if there are cars on the highway is if the pendulum thwacks into one of them. That’s quantum particle physics… I think.
Not exactly. Quantum physics applies no matter how you measure it. The double-slit experiment is an example of this: Photons moving through two slits will form a wave interference pattern on a detector plate, even though the detector doesn’t affect the position of the photons beforehand.
It’s more like: when you become aware of the results of a quantum measurement, you yourself become a part of the quantum system, and being a part of the system requires measurements to have real values. Whether you should interpret this as a wave-function collapse or branching into multiple parallel universes is up for debate though.
It gets even more interesting: to interfere in the double slit experiment, the light has to take a longer path for some points and light is really good at finding the shortest path. And, since you can extend the double slit experiment to infinite slits with infinitely thin blockers between the slits, you can leave away the slits entirely and still have a valid version of that experiment and get interference. It’s just, that most interference is destructive.
Veritasium had a very interesting video about that recently and my extrapolation of this is that there is neither a collapse of wave functions nor multiple parallel universes.
My intuition says that the wave function is there after being “observed”. There is no multiple possible outcomes, just very visible ones and a lot of destructive interfered ones.
However what i just wrote is not science but me extrapolating from science so don’t take it for anything more than that. It somehow causes quantum physics to make intuitive sense for me so i like it. Nothing more than that.
My example is more in regards to wave/particle duality as it shows up in variations of the double slit experiment. Putting a detector at one of the slits is an active interaction, giving you the particle-like behavior rather than the interference pattern.
What I mean to say is that the detector is not what’s changing the particle; It’s the process of learning about an aspect of the quantum system that forces it into one state or another (at least from our own personal perspectives).
uh, I’m a total quantum layman, but I’m pretty sure its the detector.
Nerds!
My favorite thing about quantum physics is that Schrodinger’s Cat was presented as a criticism. It was the most ridiculous extension of quantum superposition that Schrodinger could come up with. But then all the quantum physicists went, “YES! That’s a perfect way to explain it. Let’s teach that to middle schoolers!”
I remember explaining something regarding special relativity to my colleagues once, and they replied that I must be wrong because “That doesn’t make sense at all”. Of course it doesn’t make sense, that’s how you know I’m right!
Quantum Scientists: Hey, man, you just don’t get it.
Hipster Artists: Hey, man, you just don’t get it.
superdeterminism gang represent ✌️
Hidden-variable cult skulking in the background 🫥
The thing is I agree with nearly every premise of superdeterminism. But the conclusions seem stretched.
I love the idea of not abiding to the strict assumptions set forth by Bell’s theorem. The idea that determinism doesn’t have to hide within the simple hidden variable model bell’s theorem disproves to be true. The idea that we are essentially always part of the experimental system. The questioning of the objective rational experimenter with free will ideal.
Yet I haven’t seen any serious mechanism explaining how the required correlations between experimenter choices and particle states could have been embedded in the universe’s initial conditions in such a finely tuned manner, given that experimentally, the outcomes are indistinguishable from standard quantum mechanics… I just can’t imagine how this could likely be the case without adding quasi-conspiratorial assumption.
What’s so hard to understand about subatomic particles doing anything, everything, and nothing simultaneously everywhere at all times for no reason? It all cancels out in time for Newtonian Physics to take over anyway.
How much research is being done on the parts of quantum physics that would allow me to be in two places at once?
Chainsaws have existed for quite a while already.
